1. Reservation of Copyright
The disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or patent disclosure, as it appears in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
2. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a point-of-sale (POS) system used for selling goods and/or services.
3. Description of Background Information
Point-of-sale (POS) systems provide an electronic device (a local POS terminal) at a specific commercial location (i.e., a "point-of-sale") where items (goods or services) are paid for. At this point-of-sale, the local POS terminal gathers purchase-related information, including information regarding the item purchased and the money paid for the item. The sale is authorized against a central database, and the information is transferred to the central database for billing and other processing at the close of the sale. For example, the information may be relayed to an off-site database system which monitors inventory and other data, and to a financial organization.
POS systems have been employed which use customer-activated terminals (CATs) . Such POS systems allow customers at a self-service station to execute card-based POS transactions (obtaining gas and paying for it electronically) without receiving any assistance from a gas station attendant. The customer inserts a private gas card, major bank card, debit card or prepaid card into a slot located at the gas pump. Account information is transmitted via dedicated leased lines to a host computer system provided at the company's headquarters, which quickly approves the transaction. Once a transaction approval is received, the pump is unlocked, and the customer can pump gas. The customer is allowed to obtain gas at a gas station more quickly and conveniently; and the company may continuously track the value of credit card and debit card transactions, as well as reduce the amount of paper-based records. Other benefits include the reduction of accounting errors and the ability for two-way communication between the company's headquarters and the service station.
In some situations, customers desire full service which requires the attendant to be more involved in the sales transaction. The attendant can provide and take payment for gasoline, while allowing the customer to remain in his or her vehicle. This is required by New Jersey law, which allows only service station attendants to pump gas.
However, the cost of CATs systems are not justified in a full service environment. The speed of service in full service stations is much slower as card transactions must be carried to the POS device for payment. Additionally, the use of PINs further complicates the process, since the customers are uncomfortable providing PINs to the attendant.
A customer may be accustomed to entrusting a credit card (not requiring a PIN) to a gas station attendant to bring into a store for verification. However, the customer will not likely be comfortable providing a debit card (or a credit card requiring a PIN) and his or her PIN to the attendant. This problem is becoming more relevant due to the increased popularity of using debit cards at POS terminals. Credit cards may eventually also require a PIN to complete a money transaction with a POS system. This has been proposed as a solution to "credit card fraud", which is becoming a reality for retailers and their customers who use POS systems. "Credit card fraud" is coined from the practice of producing operable unauthorized copies of credit cards with a magnetic strip on its back surface. The unauthorized copy is produced using a PC and a magnetic strip encoding device.
Each sale transaction includes two components: a delivery component and a payment component. During the delivery component, a good or service is delivered to the customer. During the payment component, payment is collected for the delivered good or service. It is well recognized that the efficiency with which a sale transaction is performed can be affected by only slight modifications in the procedures used to accomplish either of these two components of a sale transaction. This is true in varied types of dealer environments including retail environments such as gas stations. Even slight delays in either delivery of an item or collection of payment can cause the gas station (or other establishment) to incur significant costs. If the retail establishment does not increase its staff or somehow enhance its equipment to eliminate these delays, it may lose customers to competition. In either event, the establishment will incur some monetary loss.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,967,366, Kaehler discloses a system including an integrated gasoline dispenser and POS authorization system together with an unattached PIN pad. The PIN pad is provided for the purpose of acquiring the PIN (personal identification number) of a customer and transmitting the PIN to the POS authorization system integrally provided with the gasoline dispenser. The system disclosed in this patent allows the customer to stay in his or her vehicle and also to privately input his or her PIN into the PIN pad without having to entrust the gas station attendant with such information. Once the customer inputs the PIN into the PIN pad, the gas station attendant then completes the collection component of the sale transaction. The attendant does this by directing the PIN pad's infrared transmitter toward the integrated gasoline dispenser to forward the information to the POS authorization system. The POS authorization system then communicates to a site controller which is programmed to communicate with an appropriate banking data network. The banking data network verifies both the PIN number and the credit card account and authorizes or denies the transaction. If the transaction is authorized, the attendant is then prompted by a visual display provided on the gasoline dispenser to carry out the remainder of the dispensing operation. When dispensing is complete, a receipt is printed at the gasoline dispenser and delivered by the attendant to the customer.
While the Kaehler system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,967,366 provides the customer with privacy to input his or her PIN, significant delays are encountered in performing sales transactions. The system is inconvenient to both the customer and the gas station attendant.
4. Terms and Acronyms
The following terms and acronyms are defined to facilitate reading and understanding the present disclosure.
POS (point-of-sale) terminal
A point-of-sale terminal is a device located where goods or services are paid for. The point-of-sale terminal executes the payment component of a sales transaction in which payment is provided in exchange for a good or service. The point-of-sale terminal may comprise one or more electronic devices which record purchase-related information at the point-of-sale and then relay the recorded information to a central system.
Account Authorization Device
A device having a recording medium for storing account data. By way of example, such a device can include a magnetic security card, or a credit card, debit card, or prepaid card having a magnetic strip on its back surface.
Security Code Access Key
A security code access key comprises a confirming code which is used as an extra layer to ensure security in accessing an account. A security code access key may comprise a personal identification number (PIN) which includes a combination of alphanumeric characters and can be specified with the use of a keypad. More generally, a security code access key may comprise a security access code which may be input by any appropriate code input device. By way of example, such a code could include a certain combination of signal levels, which may be input by reading those signal levels from a magnetic recording medium.